Mania dreams of becoming Poland\'s Shirley Temple.
Will Johanne admit to being the one who saved Mania? Is she deliberately keeping the truth a secret? Or is Mania mistaken? As Mania often says, "
Life\'s full of secrets, and every secret has a purpose.".
Her book fearlessly traverses gray areas of war, belief and memory.
Lisa Birnie interweaves the true stories of these two remarkable women with her own experience of the war, as she attempts to discover the truth.
Mania hires a cleaning lady whom she is sure is Johanne, but the woman elusively denies it.
Then, decades later, their lives serendipitously, perhaps miraculously, reconnect.
As the years pass, Mania often thinks about Johanne and wishes that she could thank her.
But when at last it does, they are suddenly separated.
Johanne even voices her desire to adopt Mania when the war ends.
Johanne, an SS guard, slips her food and looks out for her, giving her hope that she will survive.
A year later, she is transferred to the work camp, Reichenbach.
She is seven when World War II begins and eleven when she witnesses her mother die in Auschwitz.
Mania dreams of becoming Poland\'s Shirley Temple
